Back to School: Presenting An Appropriate Social Media Image
I was going to chat about Adam Riemer’s post on Google’s Zebra update, but a) Adam, Matt Cutts and many other SEO optimization experts are speaking at PubCon and unavailable to chat with us this week and b) SEO was last month’s #SMchat Marketing topic, so one Wednesday, October 17th at 1PM ET we’re going to talk about Social Media and Job Hunting because this week, I’m headed back to high school for Senior Interviews.
This is the second year in a row that I’ve helped local high school teachers provide mock interviews for their graduating Seniors. This helps both the kids who are headed directly into the working world as well as those who will need to interview for college.
Q1. How important is your social media profile when job hunting? What advice do you have for applicants?
One thing that shocked me last year when I was looking at student resumes was the lack of social media profiles. Nearly every student I know has a social media profile either on Facebook or Twitter, but I didn’t see one student who put their social media contact information on their resume. Do they think hiring managers or college admissions reps won’t be able to find them if they don’t list their profile links? Obviously, if they have things they don’t want to disclose to potential colleges or employers on their social media pages then they don’t want to provide their profile links, but more important, it shouldn’t be shared on social media or any written or electronic communications! That’s a tough lesson for many people to learn, but as Lisa Quast wrote in Forbes, your social media profile could make or break your next job opportunity.
Q2. Should job seekers provide social media profile information on their resume?
Although a reported 37% of employers use social networking sites to pre-screen applicants when hiring, there could also be problems for employers who might be exposed to the potential risks of liability, discrimination claims and non-compliance with regulations.
Q3. As an employer, do you check the social media profiles of potential new employees? Why or why not?
LinkedIn is the obvious choice for a social media profile to be used by both people looking for a job as well as recruiters and hiring managers. Amit De from Careerleaf recommends keeping your Facebook separate from your job search, while a post by Jessica Miller-Merrell suggests that Twitter might be the best place for recruiters to find candidates.
About 18 months ago, when DJ Waldow was laid off and looking for a new job, he used every imaginable social media network to help in his job search – don’t believe me? Check this out: he wrote a blog post, contacted his social media network for references, made a video of those references and put it on YouTube along with an interactive resume with a voiceover, added that same interactive resume without the voiceover to SlideShare and saved it as a PDF for downloading, created a Twitter hashtag especially for his job search efforts and and that was after he got some TV time for the creative way he used Twitter to get the job that just laid him off! How’s that for using your marketing, social media and SEO skills to their max?!?!
A recent article by Sajjad Masud from Simplicant in the Huffington Post talks about how social media can be good for employment. It certainly helped in DJ’s case. The post makes several good points including highlighting the ability of social media to make communicating with job candidates easier.
Q4. Which social network(s) do you expect to see on a resume? Does the position they’re applying for matter?
#JobHuntChat is, as the name suggests, a Twitter chat for job seeekers on Mondays at 10P ET. There are at least 10 more Twitter chats you should check out if you’re looking for a job.
Q5. Have you ever participated in a chat for job seekers? Which one(s)? Was it helpful?
Whether you’re an employer, recruiter or job candidate, I hope you’ll join us on Wednesday at 1P ET to discuss how social media can help job hunting. and if you can’t make it, please be sure to leave your questions and comments below so that I’ll know what to tell the kids when I go back to school to help with interviews!
#SMCHAT 
Posted on October 15, 2012 by sharonmostyn
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